How to Help Practice Employees Feel Valued

If they aren’t happy, they’ll leave. That's the mantra all employers, including physicians and practice owner, should take to heart. Especially today during the "Great Resignation" in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If employees don't feel valued, they will leave. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the medical office, where support staff are often under intense pressure to perform and face a daily onslaught of incoming calls, patient visits, and other tasks. The typical primary care front desk employee fields 30 inbound calls per day, and handles more than 1,500 patients and 4,300 total encounters per year, according to the MGMA DataDive Cost and Operations datasets.

It’s a difficult job, and the turnover numbers reflect that. Annual turnover among front office support staff in primary care offices exceeds 18 percent, and in surgical practices it’s above 20. For clinical support staff, these figures are 16 percent in primary care and 25 percent in surgical.